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Topic: Comic Book Thread (Read 29383 times)

I've had a scription with scifigen.com for a while to get books sent to me. That has worked but its wierd that you can't just get a straight subscription from Marvel or DC. I guess they live off of movie and toy licenses.

I can't speak of DC, but Marvel does still have a subscription service. I had/have a number of titles through them since I used to live in an area that didn't have a comic book store within an hour's drive. I've since let a lot of them run out and switched almost fully over to SciFiGenre.com, but they do still have a subscription service through Marvel. I know I currently get Amazing Spidey that way (since that was the one I started with), and our daughter gets Marvel Adventures Spidey that way as well. I think subs run like $22 for a year (or 12 issues, whatever is first I guess), and we usually get them within a week after the store release.

I've never understood why there aren't more retail options to get comics too. Our TRU also has a small section, and seems reasonably up to date (within a month or so), but the selection is small and sporadic it seems. Still nice to see. I understand that it is a different world these days, but when I was a kid (prior to subscriptions) I got the majority of my comics from the local (small town) drug store. They always had a pretty good selection, and that's where the majority of my comics came from.

I don't think most retailers want to worry about unsold stock. If a comic is a month old, it's never going to sell at retail. And comics aren't like magazines, where the same books are produced each month year-after-year. As such they're more difficult to manage, and you'd need to dedicate resources to making sure you buy the right number of each issue. And you need to make sure you don't buy anything you'll get in trouble over. And to do it properly you need to dedicate a bunch of space to it. Thus they rightly conclude it's not worth the effort.

Most retailers don't manage magazines though. There are news services dedicated to it.

This discussion reminds me of my youth, going to the drug store to get new comics. I remember that my mother's store of choice did not carry GI Joe, so I would have to regularly plead for trips to a different store to get my Joe on.

I believe comics would fall under DSD (Direct Store Delivery). Some of the bigger book store chains have them, and that's how they do it. Categories across the store use this to manage, stock, and straighten up shelf presence without dedicating their own people. I know Snack Chips, Soda, Bread all use a DSD service. With DSD, you don't need to do anything other than code the UPCs into the system - an outside vendor takes care of deliverying and stocking the merchandise for you. I think I've even seen these people managing the greeting cards section, which wouldn't be all that different from managing comics. You may have some issues with coding in limited series issues, but maybe that means you don't carry them. Lord knows I would rather they just plug those stories into the main titles versus restarting the count on new titles all the time. (I'm looking at you Transformers).

As for unsaleables, I thought magazine and comic companies used to absorb those costs if the comics were unsold? Maybe Marvel and DC moved away from that, but I think that's how they still handle magazines that are out of date. That limits the risk to retailers, even if they end up absorbing some of the cost.

I don't subscribe to the space issue though. TRU has a silly layout for their comics that ends up getting them all torn and disorganized at my local stores. Just get a wire rack that spins like you'd find at B&N...I'm sure Borders has lots of them for sale cheap. That doesn't take any added space from the aisle and you can move it wherever you like in the store. I just think it's a lost opportunity for retailers and the industry. I'd much rather buy my kids a comic than these crap Mighty Beans or Fighter Pods. If you can sell a lego minifigure for $4, you can sell a full length comic book.

My friend used to do that for Utz chips. There was still a ton of work to be done by the retailer. Most of his job was to go to each store and try to talk them into featuring his chips on an end cap or doing sales or letting him set up displays in the aisles. There were a lot of hands-on negotiations which required store managers to know the product and how well it was selling. That kind of model for comics would be rough.

I think I've even seen these people managing the greeting cards section, which wouldn't be all that different from managing comics.

Target runs like this, I believe. My local store has someone that does all the trading cards and they're also the same people that do greeting cards. It's been the same people for years now. I see them every couple of weeks.

It would seem like TRU would be a no-brainer for comic books since there are so many ties to toy lines they carry. But I've never paid much attention to the selection when I've been in stores. I forget they're there, I forget where the stores have them and if I don't notice them when I walk by, I'll sometimes leave the store without ever looking them over.

E...

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"I sell the drugs that keep you people from seeing dragons at night." - Gus "Psych"

When I was a kid collecting spider-man books in the eighties and early nineties, all of my current issues came from the grocery store, or the drug store. Would set aside my buy list, then browse and read the other titles I was interested in or that were crossing over stories until mom was done buying groceries.

$0.75 an issue, too. Don't remember how much a MAD Magazine was at the time, but it was a monthly purchase for me, too. *Sigh.*

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This sticker is dangerous and inconvenient, but I do love Fig Newtons.

Bunch of guys over on Twitter have been talking about it this week but I had to look it up. It's from Image comics and I now recall seeing the cover art but thought this was something that had come out a while ago.

It's from Brian K Vaughan who did Y: The Last Man. It sounds like an interesting plot. The guys on Twitter that have read it already said it was good and that the art was outstanding.

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"I sell the drugs that keep you people from seeing dragons at night." - Gus "Psych"

I have a question for anyone who has been reading the Batman comics for a while.

I was watching an older episode of The Big Bang Theory the other day and Sheldon was in an argument about Batman and Joe Shill. I always thought that Batman (in the comics) never knew the identity of his parents' killer and that was the driving factor to seek justice for Gotham because his parents never received justice.

I always thought Joe Shill was created strictly for the Chris Nolan movies. Has there been some sort of change to Batman's backstory that I didn't know about?

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Peacekeeper, when it absolutely, positively has to be nuked in 30 minutes or less. Or the next nuke's free!

This might be a long shot, but for anyone who went to their local Free Comic Book Day event this weekend - did you happen to get extras of any of the books (the Star Wars Han/Chewie adventure in particular). We were going to hit our local store prior to seeing Avengers, but when we got there the line was so long we would have missed the movie. We stopped afterwards, but they were all out aside from the GL Animated/Young Justice one. My daughter really wanted to get the Star Wars comic (not to mention the Marvel and DC releases), so I felt bad that we missed out. I've been checking ebay as well, but I just thought I'd check here if anyone for some reason happened to get an extra.

Hey Brian - I stopped in with my kids and got doubles of a few things. I am pretty sure I have a spare Star Wars and Avengers among others if you need 'em. Don't pay for them - I hate that someone out there is selling their FREE COMICS for profit. Goes against what this day is supposed to be all about.